Speaker Details

Rana el Kaliouby is a Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab, inventing technologies that sense and have a commonsense understanding of people’s affective and cognitive experiences. El Kaliouby holds a B.Sc and M.Sc in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. Her doctoral dissertation, which has been nominated to the British Computer Society Distinguished Dissertation Award, broke new ground in advancing the nascent ability of machines to infer cognitive-affective mental states in real time from nonverbal expressions of people. El Kaliouby did her post-doctoral training at MIT with Professor Rosalind W. Picard, where she worked on extending her doctoral work to measuring user experiences, human-computer interaction, personal robotics, as well as in learning contexts. Her post-doc research---developing the first in the world suite of social-emotional wearables for autism spectrum disorders---was rated among the top 100 innovations of the year 2006 by New York Times. She played a key role in launching the autism technology initiative at MIT Media Lab, with three autism-related projects underway (funded by NSF and NLMFF) and co-taught the first in the world Autism Theory and Technology course with Rosalind Picard, Cynthia Breazeal and Sherry Turkle. El Kaliouby works closely with sponsors of the Media Lab, including Google, Microsoft, Pepsico, Intuit, Samsung and others and continues to build collaborations within MIT and other institutions, sponsors and foundations locally and internationally. El Kaliouby is the 2006 recipient of the Higher Education and Learning Institutes Gold Award from the Global Women and Inventors Network. She exhibits her work regularly to engage the public in the research and to encourage more under-represented individuals to pursue a career in technology innovation. She has been invited to present her work at Google, Royal Society and others, and her work has been featured in NewScientist, Reuters, CNET, Wired, the Boston Globe, New York Times, Slashdot and BoingBoing. She has lived on four continents: Africa (Egypt), Middle East (Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates), Europe (UK) and the United States. She is most proud of her husband and her five year-old daughter.

Presentation Abstract:

Title: From Knowledge-based to Creative Societies - Science Centers as Creativity Incubators We live in a time where human creativity ---the ability to come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things—is the ultimate economic resource. Just as knowledge-based workers surpassed physical laborers in economic importance, economies are changing yet again, and the power is shifting to individuals who are creative, as this is what ultimately raises productivity and living standards. In today’s world, it is not enough to read, write and even be tech-savvy to be literate. Today, being creative is a key component of being literate. This presentation will challenge the audience to think beyond knowledge-based societies and toward creative societies. The talk argues that the new role of science centers (and other venues of informal learning) is that of a Creativity Incubator – a place that facilitates creativity, prototyping, experimentation and self-expression, where children would conceive new ideas, explore, take risks, invent and test new concepts and ideas. We believe that instilling this curiosity and passion for learning and creating, will empower children in the NAMES to become active, productive and creative participants of our society. The talk will describe several initiatives at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Okawa Center for Future Children to develop technologies that harness the creative potential of children and will present various creativity camps and workshop centers that were started by our lab around the world. Speaker Bio: Dr. Rana el Kaliouby is a Research Scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the Media Laboratory, and Adjunct Faculty at the American University in Cairo creating new technologies that extend social-emotional communication of children and adults to facilitate sharing of experiences, interaction and learning. She co-taught the first in the world Autism Theory and Technology course at MIT. Her work has been featured in the NewScientist, New York Times, Reuters, CNET, Wired, the Boston Globe, Slashdot and BoingBoing. El Kaliouby is the 2006 recipient of the Global Women and Inventors Network, Higher Education & Learning Institutes (Gold Award). El Kaliouby holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. from the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

Status: Confirmed